Sat, June 18
... Till the sun comes up
Many things to say... where to start? I am beyond sick of the rain. Calgary is going to float away, and we're all remembering why we opted to live here, rather than in Vancouver. Two weeks is more than enough, thank you very much. I'd like my dry prairie heat back, please. The mosquitoes are going to be killer this summer.
New York feels a bit more real--the more people know, the more I feel like it's actually going to happen. Even so, it feels like it's been a relatively uneventful week--New York is something that's going to happen. This week, not too much exciting and wonderful has shaken up my world.
Wanda and I went to go see a couple of one-act plays at Vertigo Mystery Theatre. Excellent. Seriously, some of the best shows I've seen in a while.
I love those first few moments of a show, before you know what the style or story is going to be, watching it unfold. You don't know anything about the characters or the plot or anything, but you know that by the end you'll be engrossed. Enthralled. Hanging on the edge of your seat. Within the hour of the first act, you'll be invested in the characters. You still won't know everything that's going to happen, but you'll know where it's coming from and where it's heading, and you'll care about it.
What else? Kat and I went out last. Girls' night out. IKEA (and a very soggy drive there), dinner at East Side Mario's, and then Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Which, by the way, was absolutely hilarous. I enjoyed it.
It was one of those nights, though, where I picked her up at 5:30, dropped her off at 2:30, and we talked every possible minute in between, about everything under the sun. Marriage, parenting, New York, careers, friendship, guys, movies, celebrities, the future... the works. Anything and everything that we could talk about, we did. I love nights like that.
And one of the most memorable conversations was this realization that I had a while ago, about applying a certain theological term to friendship.
In theology, there's something called the "scandal of particularity." Basically, it means that God is God, and Jesus was God, but God had to be limited by becoming human. Even though God is omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, he had to be confined to one location, one body, and one time. Jesus was a man, living in Palestine, 2000 years ago. He wasn't a woman, he didn't live in the Middle Ages, and it wasn't in Europe or South America. So, God is still God, and Jesus is still God, and Jesus was still human, and lived a human experience, but it was bound by the particulars that all humanity is bound by. I don't explain it very well, but that's the general idea.
Anyways, I realized that there's a sort of a scandal of particularity that plagues friendship. I mean, Kat and I are both in our early 20's, trying to figure out what that means--discovering our identity as adults; becoming the women that we want to be; exploring careers and the passions that drive us; figuring out where marriage, kids, and family fit into that; taking the values that drove us as teens and making them grow with us... The basis of what it means to be a young woman is the same. The difference is in the particulars.
She's married and has a child, I'm a wannabe entrepreneur. She lives in a smaller town, I live in the city. We both have degrees. We both have the same faith. Her extended family includes in-laws, but is still smaller than mine. My family is still just "my side" of the family. She'll do most of her world travelling when she's older, with her husband, when her kids are grown up. I've done some, and am planning on doing more in the next year. She married at 20, I won't get married until at least my mid-20's. Her children will be older than mine. We both still rent; neither one of us owns a home yet. Her decisions (like her bank account) are joint, mine aren't.
That doesn't mean that our core values are different, or that we're going through things that are worlds apart. We're going through and struggling through the same things, but in different contexts. And the things that are specific and particular to each context... well, we live vicariously through each other on those ones.
Anyways... those are just my thoughts. That's why we are what we are... we've stopped fighting it. We've stopped trying to be the same, because we're not.
In all the ways that matter most, we are, and in the details... well, they're just that. The details. The particulars. They're like hair color and height--they don't make you who you are, they just help people recognize you.
One year ago today: I understood what it meant to make love to an instrument. The bass player was in love with his instrument... he caressed it and drew the sound out of it in a way that transcended merely "playing." This was a love affair.
infinite || abyss
posted at 10:15 p.m.
